Jazz /
Touching & Blood 1965/66
Paul Bley is a master of the piano trio. He showed new and different ways of exploring the complex triangular geometry of what has arguably become jazz’s signature formation. Bley’s early recording with Charles Mingus and Art Blakey promised great things to come. He emerged more fully as part of Jimmy Giuffre’s innovative trio with Steve Swallow, but it was with his own trios of the mid to late 1960s, with drummer Barry Altschul and bassists Kent Carter and Mark Levinson, that he really began to…
The Moment
** 2021 Stock ** Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre provides us with a rare glimpse into his live performance. Perhaps one of the most influential and under-recorded artists of the AACM, Kalaparush is joined by Ravish Momin on percussion and Jesse Dulman on tuba. Jesse's tuba recalls the pre-bass second line of jazz music and Ravish provides worldly polyrhythmic sequences. All of the playing comes together with the elegance of Kalaparush's compositions and improvisations. Recorded at one night's perfor…
Live at the D.I.A.
** 2021 Stock ** For nearly two decades Griot Galaxy was at the vanguard of the Detroit Music scene. Members of the band performed and recorded with Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Abdullah Ibrahim and Phil Cohran. The fact that there were only two releases of the band under their own name during this period seems criminal. Entropy Stereo is pleased to present this complete concert performance at the Detroit Institute of Arts from 1983. Beautifully recorded, this is Griot Galaxy at their peak. Griot Ga…
Branches
** 2021 Stock ** Entropy Stereo Recordings presents Branches by Northwoods Improvisers. This album represents a slightly different approach for the group. While the Northwoods have collectively used a wide variety of instruments on previous recordings, here they choose to explore the possibilities with the marimba, bass, and drum combination. The album opens with the original composition "Kuntu" which launches into a high energy 7/8 African groove. In fact, rhythms are the key to Branches. Throu…
The Eighth House - Riding with Pluto
** 2021 Stock ** The 8th House is a disc of solo clarinet and saxophone improvisations with a few duets with Juma Santos thrown in. Wendell Harrison and the Tribe were pioneers along with BAG in St. Louis and the AACM in Chicago. Here Wendell recalls some of the freedom and soul from his early work with the Tribe in Detroit. He is joined by percussionist Juma Santos on a few tracks. You may recall Juma from his work with Miles Davis on the Bitches Brew record, or some of his work with Marion Bro…
Luc Houtkamp in Chicago
** 2021 Stock ** This disc represents the first American release for Dutch saxophonist Luc Houtkamp. Here, he appears with Chicago stalwarts Kent Kessler (double bass) and Michael Zerang (drums) in a 1997 studio date. Liner notes by Ken Vandermark, and artwork by Northwoods' Mike Johnston. "Houtkamp often showcases an aural dictionary of multiphonics complete with echoing tongue slaps, colored hissing and speedy key pops, adding the coagulated vibrato of every bar-walking saxophonist's nightmare…
The Room: Time & Space
** 2021 Stock ** Those artists that have the courage to bare themselves are often warned to "brace up." Since few things in improvised music are considered as dangerous as allowing space to others. Someone might easily grab all of that space and position themselves as ringleader, in the contest that a concert sometimes is. The Seppe Gebruers, Hugo Antunes and Paul Lovens trio are definitely not at each other's throats, though. The title of their 2018 album recorded 2016, The Room: Time & Space, …
Anemic Cinema
Anemic Cinema is a fresh instrumental quartet at the junction of (free) improvised music, contemporary classical and heavy metal. Created for Citadelic 2020 by guitarist Artan Buleshkaj, it features some of Belgium’s most adventurous young improvisers. The omission of a conventional bass instrument allows other instruments to assume this role (or not). This creates certain interesting compositional and improvisational challenges. The timbre distinct for (heavy) metal simultaneously provides an a…
Square Talks
Don't judge a man by the size of his discography. Paul Van Gysegem can only be heard on a handful of releases, but he played a crucial role in the development and visibility of improvised music in Belgium. More than half a century ago, he started inviting international heavyweights to Ghent and performed with many of them. Aorta, recorded by his Sextet in 1971, was one of the key documents of that turbulent era and was rightfully reissued by French Futura label in 2011. However, let's not focus …
BackBack 4
** 2021 Stock ** Dust, darkness, headlights. Motion in the nothingness, the wasteland. Like a single, lost particle, the first track roams through this black night. Exposition. We discover. We see how form and shape come into being, how a construct creates itself: A civilization, buildings, people, interaction. Paths intersect and the tension bursts. The sharp baritone saxophone (Marc De Maeseneer) cuts through the air, drilling into ones ear. The conflict is physically tangible and we see that …
Fundament
** 2021 Stock ** The cornerstone of an ensemble like Fundament is the creation of a corporeal acoustic tour de force, via XL-sound bodies, be it strumento a fiato, a corda and corde vocali. 5 double-basses; 1 tubax, 1 bass saxophone, 1 trombone; 2 bass tuba's, 2 baritone saxophones; 5 throat-singers: all indispensable parts of the ensemble. By using the strumento a fiato, the sound is created by the breath current causing the air column to vibrate. The power of the breath and the nature of breat…
Hōryū-ji
** 2021 Stock ** Hōryū-ji or else Learning Temple of the Flourishing Law is one of the powerful Seven Great Buddhist Temples in Japan. Horyu-ji has entasis, in architecture, the application of a convex curve to a surface for aesthetic purposes. It also serves an engineering function regarding strength, the key word of this collaboration that brought together Sakata, Yermenoglou, Di Domenico and Damianidis in a two days live concert meeting in Duende jazz club at Thessaloniki in May 2018. The rec…
Mephiti
** 2021 Stock ** For his band Mephiti, Bogaerts can depend on guitarists Bert Cools and Ruben Machtelinckx, two exponents of a generation of string adepts who have worked themselves beyond the classic examples that elaborate on the blues. The sharpness of Bert Cools, on semi-acoustic and electric guitar, and the thoughtful and recognizable playing of Machtelinckx (electric) form a stream of dreamy, lyrical sounds, with the occasional strong outburst. Complemented with the klanklės handled by Lit…
Gabbro
** 2021 Stock ** Belgian baritone saxophone players Hanne De Backer and Marc De Maeseneer make music in their broadest available musical spectrum. Nevertheless, they go back for their very first release to the jazz and freejazz tradition and give it a personnal, contemporary and unique touch. For this recording (september 2016) they looked for the limits, colors and possibilities of the baritone saxophone in a perfectly resonating space at Het Bos in Antwerp.
Konkan Dance
Following in the footsteps of the landmark 1966 double-quartet recording by Joe Harriott and John Mayer, Indian born musician Amancio D’Silva produced some of the most adventurous and sophisticated recordings within the canon of ‘indo-jazz’, a term used to define a pioneering east meets west synthesis that reflected the shifting musical and cultural landscape of post-war Britain. An experiment which reached a pinnacle in 1972 with D’Silva’s seminal recording Dream Sequence by Cosmic Eye (The Rou…
Celebration
Piano-Drums Duos are the preferred playing arrangement of pianist Irène Schweizer. Her mastery of duets with important drummers of contemporary jazz are documented on numerous Intakt CDs. Han Bennink, Pierre Favre, Louis Moholo, Günter Baby Sommer, Andrew Cyrille and Joey Baron among them.
The Chicago drummer Hamid Drake, born in 1955, and Irène Schweizer, born in 1941, have performed together on numerous occasions both in Europe and Chicago. Together they have appeared on the Intakt CD "Irè…
The Food Supplement
** 2021 Stock ** The Singing Painters as a trio began early 1998 and had its first performance at croxhapox. The original trio had Laura van (lyrics, vocals), Michaël Borremans (guitar) and Merlyn Paridaen (drums, percussion). After the split in 2011 Merlyn Paridaen and Laura van went on operating as a duo, occassionally with Adriaan Verwée on bass clarinet, until Mathias Van de Wiele (guitar/ Moker, Wheels) joined the troops, early 2016. From this The Singing Painters Meet Carver & Horn emerged…
Shapes
** 2021 Stock ** Karl Van Deun has been active as a musician/composer since the late 80's. He has been involved in a.o. jazz, folk, rock, blues, and contemporary music. As a professional musician he was especially active in the late 80's and early 90's and played with musicians like Mal Waldron, Philip Catherine, Erwin Vann, Pierre Van Dormael, Michel Hatzigeorgiou, Kurt Van Herck, Dré Pallemaerts and many others... Because of hearing problems (hyper-acusis) Karl had to take a step back as a per…
Abel
** 2021 Stock ** The Belgian Ghent-based quartet Kabas releases its debut album ʻAbelʼ in April 2016. The international release tour starts on the 7th of April in Antwerp. Later that month Kabas will play in Berlin, Amsterdam, The Hague, Lille, Ghent, Liège, Brussels, Lokeren and Herent. ʻAbelʼ will appear on the El Negocito Records label (eNR044) both on vinyl and on cd. The production and recording of the album were made possible by crowd-funding and the support of the Ghent Jazz Festival, Jaz…
Live at La Resistenza
** 2021 Stock ** Dikeman Parker Drake came about when the DOEK festival in Amsterdam invited the American saxophonist (and Dutch resident) to form a new group for the festival. Dikeman went straight for one of the greatest rhythm sections of the last 30 years - asking William Parker and Hamid Drake to join him in a trio. They played on that tour at La Resistenza Ghent and a recording was made for the el Negocito Records label linked to the club.
William Parker and Hamid Drake first came together…